Water

The water utility sector is probably the one that we know the best. This is where we have developed a lot of our workforce management expertise; we’ve led game-changing transformation initiatives and helped to implement innovations that have set new benchmarks. But that doesn’t mean we are complacent about the ways in which we can support the industry, or its unique challenges.

Your challenges

Water utilities are subject to ongoing and evolving change. Private ownership, business drivers of profit and return on investment, shareholder demands, OFWAT and other regulatory bodies, customer expectations, changes in communication media, and a prominence on the political agenda provide a heady mix. Most recently service incentive mechanism (SIM) scores, the TOTEX approach, and the drive towards retail / wholesale separation continue to ensure the sector never stands still.

And it’s all too easy to forget that behind each running tap and working drain, is an infrastructure of towers, reservoirs, boreholes, pumping stations, and treatment works, as well as miles and miles of pipework and connections to households and business, all of which require continual replacement, refurbishment, routine maintenance and, on occasion, reactive repair.

In short, field-based operations, and their supporting functions, are all-important in the water industry.

Issues we typically encounter:

Below-expectation customer service

Job backlogs

Failing and at-risk assets

Priority work not being done, including maintenance work on critical assets

The mix of planned and reactive work, and the cost of reactive work

An absence of planning

Ineffective work schedules manifesting in idle time for engineers, excessive travel and environmental impacts

Reactive and unplanned use of contractor resources

Employee disengagement

Conflict between the back office and the field

Lack of real-time or forward looking performance metrics

How we can help

Our prime focus is on job and workforce management; for water companies, we help ensure that service provision, asset serviceability, regulatory compliance, environmental responsibility and other business drivers are all met. And we do this with a deep understanding of the business processes that deliver field-based operations in the water industry:

Asset management

Job management

Resource management, including insourcing / outsourcing decisions

Customer management

Planning

Logistics

Scheduling and deployment

Mobile

Information, including performance dashboards

We are often asked to:

Develop a workforce management strategy

Transform planning and scheduling functions

Implement new IT (back office and field)

Provide programme assurance around delivery

Manage change

We genuinely love working with water companies; there’s a willingness to innovate, a desire to do things better and a collaborative culture that fits exactly with how we do things. And it’s great to know the work we’re doing will have benefits for us all as consumers.

Our Water Experience

We understand how field operations work in water companies. In recent years we have, for example:

Speak to our industry specialist

Mark has a depth of water industry experience that won’t be found in many other consultancies. He has worked with Anglian Water for a number of years in roles which have helped to transform their operations, including improvements to planning and despatch functions, information management and scheduling processes. Mark has recently worked at South West Water to help review and shape their vision for future fieldforce operations.